These people call themselves Flat Earthers because they believe the earth, what we think to be a big spinning blue orb of life, is flat as a table. John Vnuk, the epicenter of the budding movement in Fort Collins, Colorado, claims that there are believers in the highest levels of science, sports, journalism, and arts.

Vnuk believes that this is a new awakening, saying, “love it or hate it, you can’t ignore Flat Earth.”

This Fort Collins group is compiled mostly of white and mostly male, college-age members. It touts itself as the first community of Flat Earthers in the United States. Sister groups have been created in Boston, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Chicago.

In Colorado, Ptolemiaic-science revivalists have very lofty ambitions. They want to raise $6,000 to put up a billboard along Interstate 25 broadcasting their worldview. A GoFundMe site quickly raised over $400 but has recently been stalled. Anyone is allowed to contribute funds or submit billboard ideas, and the group has promised $100 to the winning submitter.

At their Tuesday night meet-ups, dubbed “Flat Earth or Other Forbidden Topics,” believers invite fellow adherents to open discussions in which the like-minded confirm one another’s hunches.

“There’s so much evidence once you set aside your preprogrammed learning and begin to look at things objectively with a critical eye,” says Bob Knodel, a Denver resident and featured guest at a recent Tuesday meeting. “You learn soon that what we’re taught is mainly propaganda.”

Knodel worked for 35 years as an engineer and now runs a popular YouTube channel Globebusters, which has almost 2 million views across more than 135 videos. He has researched conspiracies for a very long time, and claims to have looked critically at NASA.

The research done for group meetings normally falls on the shoulders of movement leaders, many of whom have backgrounds in related fields.

Mark Sargent is the father of Flat Earth organizing in the United States. He worked as a software analyst in Boulder for 20 years before relocating to Seattle, where he sets up Flat Earth meet-ups through Youtube. His channel has 7.7 million video views and almost 40,000 regular subscribers.

Like most members, Sargent converted to Flat Earthism late in life. For most of his life, he believed that the Earth was a spinning globe. Something changed summer of 2014, when he found a YouTube video contending that Earth is flat.

He thought the video was interesting but he wasn’t convinced. He believed he could prove the earth is spherical. Yet nine months later, he realized he couldn’t prove it.

On Feb. 10, 2015, he decided to take the plunge and began creating Flat Earth content of his own. To his surprise, his daily videos ignited a firestorm online. The 49-year-old now devotes himself to Flat Earth propagation full time. He has made 600 YouTube videos and been interviewed over 120 times.

His conversion follows that of many believers: latent anti-authoritarianism, which first found outlets through popular conspiracy theories that turned into full-blown anti-globe conspiracies by the mid-2010.

Sargent acknowledges that he didn’t found Flat Earthism, which has existed in some forms since antiquity. Yet he and a few others combined communications technology with old-fashioned salesmanship to grow a movement.

The first Flat Earth International Conference, which will be in Raleigh, N.C., in November, features a number of Colorado-based Flat Earthers, including Sargent, Knodel, and MAtthew Procella, or ODD Reality, a Denver-based rapper and YouTuber with 75,000 subscribers and nearly 7 million video views.

There are differences of opinion that divide the community on matters of scientific interpretation, cosmology, strategy and even the most fundamental questions of geology, like what shape our planet actually is.

What is known is that these believers are constantly persecuted and made fun of for their beliefs, yet they still continue preaching.

Many Flat Earthers subscribe to the “ice wall theory,” or the belief that the world is circumscribed by giant ice barriers, like the walls of a bowl, that then extend infinitely along a flat plane. Sargent envisions Earth as a giant circular disc covered by a dome. He compares it to a snow globe.

What lies on the other side?

Flat Earthers do not claim to know with certainty. When skeptics demand proof, Flat Earthers talk about figures from so-called curvature tests and gyroscope calibrations that seem to buttress their views. Leaders want Flat Earthism to be an accessible creed for the common man, a movement that gives life meaning by punching back at scientific disenchantment.

Flat Eathers speculate that the global conspiracy has been upheld by those in power, i.e. the super elite, heads of government, universities, and major corporations that supposedly know the truth. They believe that these people in power uphold this ‘scheme’ to control humanity’s mind.

Ariana Marisolis a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She graduated The Evergreen State College with an undergraduate degree focusing on Sustainable Design and Environmental Science.